Troubleshooting Solid Backups – NextGen Backup and License Errors

When using Solid Backups – NextGen from Solid Central, you may see one of the following error messages in your backup timeline:

• Solid Backups could not verify the license of your site. Failed to perform license check.
• Solid Backups could not complete the requested backup. Solid Backups did not complete backing up your database.

This guide explains what these messages mean and how you (or your host) can resolve them.

Solid Backups could not verify the license of your site. Failed to perform license check. #

This error message means Solid Backups — NextGen wasn’t able to run the wp-cli command it uses to confirm your license.

The wp-cli command it runs during the process is:

wp ithemes-licensing show solid-backups

Possible causes on why this fails are:

• WP-CLI isn’t installed or accessible to the SSH/SFTP user the plugin connects with.
• The PHP environment on your server is missing the Phar extension (required for WP-CLI to work).
• Your wp-config.php file uses a relative path for salts that prevents WP-CLI from running outside the WordPress root.

Recommended actions:

1) Verify these two things with your hosting provider:

• WP-CLI is installed and accessible to the user Solid Backups – NextGen connects with.
• Your server’s PHP environment used by WP-CLI includes the Phar extension.

2) If your host has confirmed the above but the issue remains, check your wp-config.php file for this line:

require 'wp-salt.php';

and try to change it to:

require __DIR__ . '/wp-salt.php';

3) Re-run the backup from your Solid Central dashboard after you or your host confirms these checks.

Solid Backups could not complete the requested backup. Solid Backups did not complete backing up your database. #

This error message means the backup was able to connect to your server but failed while exporting the database.

Possible causes:

• The database user connected to your WordPress site doesn’t have all the required MySQL permissions.
• The database server dropped the connection during export (common with large tables or limited memory).
• A MySQL configuration limit (such as packet size or timeout) prevented the database dump process from finishing.

Recommended actions:

1) Confirm with your hosting provider or server admin that your WordPress database user has permission to run the following MySQL command:

LOCK TABLES

If not, have them run the following command on your server to grant your database user the necessary permission:

GRANT LOCK TABLES ON [table_name].* TO '[db_user]'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

replace [table_name] and [db_user] with the actual database table and database user values.

2) If permissions are correct but the error persists, ask your host to check for:

• Timeout or memory errors during database export.
• Adjusting MySQL settings such as max_allowed_packet and net_read_timeout / net_write_timeout if they are too low.

If you have reached out to the SolidWP Support Team with the error reference, they can inform you of the actual error message on the logs which can help your host identify the affected database table.

Then, you or your host can try to repair and optimize the affected table, as part of the troubleshooting process.

3) Re-run the backup after your host confirms these checks.

Still not sure which applies to you? #

If the problem persists, contact the SolidWP Support Team and provide the error message and the reference number shown in the Central Timeline, as well as the steps you’ve taken to troubleshoot the issue.